Twenty years ago, amid the swirl of controversy surrounding the publication of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was inspired to write the children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his 11-year-old son Zafar. The modern fable follows Haroun, the son of a a great storyteller, on his quest into the World of Magic to find a way to restore his father’s creative talents. When Rushdie’s younger son, Milan, read the book years later, he requested a book of his own from his father. This request coincided with the author’s plan to revisit Haroun’s world. “It had always been in my mind to try to do a second one, and this kind of prompted me to do it,” Rushdie explains to The Boston Globe. The new book Luka and the Fire of Life, finished just in time for Milan’s 12th birthday, is a sequel to Haroun, but the story features a new hero and stands on its own. “I wanted to create a new, imaginative world and a new reason for going there,” states the writer. Read more…